On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 11:17:06AM -0500, Robert Treat wrote: > It strikes me as a bit odd to have this extra wording in the pg_class > documentation: > > + Every all-frozen page must also be marked > + all-visible in the visibility map, so > + <structfield>relallfrozen</structfield> should be less than or equal > to > + <structfield>relallvisible</structfield>. However, if either field is > + updated manually or if the visibility map is corrupted, it is possible > + for <structfield>relallfrozen</structfield> to exceed > + <structfield>relallvisible</structfield>. > > For example, we don't document that rellallvisible should never exceed > relpages, and we aren't normally in the habit of documenting weird > behavior that might happen if people go updating the system catalogs. > Maybe it's just me, but when I read this earlier, I thought there > might be some intended use case for updating the catalog manually that > you had in mind and so the comments were warranted (and indeed, it's > part of why I thought the warning would be useful for users). But upon > reading the thread more and another pass through your updated patches, > this doesn't seem to be the case, and I wonder if this language might > be more encouraging of people updating catalogs than we would > typically be.
+1. If we did want to add more information about the ordinary expectations of relallfrozen and friends here, I'd suggest doing so in a separate patch. IMHO the usual "This is only an estimate..." wording is sufficient for the introduction of relallfrozen. -- nathan
